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AWS Lambda

aws.amazon.com

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Re: AWS Lambda

#131

Post by willyg302 »

riobard wrote: post #129

How is it different from Google App Engine? Conceptually the two seem very similar to me, that is, developers do not have to worry about the underling infrastructure at all---just write code and deploy.

As a tldr, not-quite-right distinction, GAE is more of a platform whereas Lambda is more of a service.

I feel that GAE is a much more generalized solution for building/deploying applications, e.g. it's very integrated with BigTable and has caching/cron/queuing support. To a point you do not have to worry about the infrastructure, but write any GAE app at scale and soon you'll run into questions of caching some content and optimizing DB writes.

Whereas Lambda, at least right now, is a more specific use case: respond to an event by running some code. It's too early to tell whether managing Lambda functions will require fine-tuning the "advanced settings" (in all honesty it probably will) but it seems like it's much simpler.

Re: AWS Lambda

#132

Post by willyg302 »

dominotw wrote: post #25

Would this be useful for build services like setting up a jenkins instance using lambda compute resources as slaves?

Using Lambda for the slaves is probably not the best idea because, as @saynay mentioned, you couldn't run builds any longer than a few minutes.

You could "wrap" a Jenkins fleet running on EC2 with Lambda functions to set up on a build request event and tear down on a build finish event, and theoretically this would reduce the amount of resources you consume if your builds are few and far between. Think of GitHub webhooks triggering Travis CI as an analogy.

Whether or not that would actually be useful is debatable.

Re: AWS Lambda

#133

Post by jdub »

notastartup wrote: post #60
MBlume wrote: post #4

Right now the only language/runtime supported is js/node, but they intend to include others. (figured people would want to know this, and you have to scroll a ways to find out, so)

I saw it and was shocked that Python is not yet supported.

AWS is all about MVP, MVP, MVP. node.js happens to be a really good fit for this use case.

Re: AWS Lambda

#134

Post by donavanm »

cperciva wrote: post #130
donavanm wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch out for the limit on the number of concurrent invalidation batches. Youll probably want to scan for "pending" PUT objects and try aggregate them in to an invalidation batch.

Good point. I guess this would need to be "S3 PUT event triggers code which adds object name to a list and starts a timer"; "timer expiry triggers code which issues a batch invalidate for the list (and empties the list)". I wonder if there's any good way to generate that timer expiry event...

Hrm, I havent gone through the docs completely but object lifcycle managment on the sentinel/list object?

Re: AWS Lambda

#136

Post by amalag »

sk5t wrote: post #121
mring33621 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading the description of AWS Lambda, I expected SQS to be first in the list of event sources. Huh.

Wouldn't that be kind of unnecessary, when it's not too tough to write an SQS-reactive client? Starting with S3 fills a gap as there is AFAIK otherwise no way to start processing based on changes to S3, without writing a rather wasteful program to list the resources, maintain state, and hunt for differences.

But if you have an SQS reactive client it would sit in EC2. With a service like Lambda, they are promising millisecond based pricing. A very ambitious project by them.

Re: AWS Lambda

#137

Post by mooreds »

vmarsy wrote: post #44
makmanalp wrote: post #38

I'm so torn - on one side this is a very neat thing that'll save a lot of boilerplate, and on the other it screams of vendor lock-in.

as MBlume mentionned[1], they seem to support NodeJS. From the FAQ : "At launch AWS Lambda supports code written in Node.js (JavaScript). Your code can include existing Node.js libraries, even native ones." so it seems that you can avoid lock-in if most of your javascript code is not too coupled to Amazon's API And they claim on the detail page: "With AWS Lambda, there are no new languages, tools, or frameworks to le…

Err, I think the parent's point wasn't lockin in terms of the code you write, but in terms of your architecture. Setting up your own system driven off of s3 or dynamodb events (if you wanted to move the functions onto your own bare metal) would be a pretty big project.

Re: AWS Lambda

#138

Post by saranagati »

jbaudanza wrote: post #68

It would be nice if a lambda could respond to web requests. Maybe an Elastic Loud Balancer could be an "event-source".

havent looked too much into it but I dont see why it couldnt. use s3 website, event notification to notify a user accessed a file (web page) and generates a new custom file in your bucket. generated file has some sort of preshared known info between the two in the file name (eg client ip address or cookie). accessed web page either sends back a page reload to the new generated page or just an async page that will render the custom content.

edit: oh also delete the generated file once accessed using lambda by either delete on get notification or just a lambda scheduled event.

Re: AWS Lambda

#139

Post by ceejayoz »

Apoplectic wrote: post #113

Huh? Shared server infrastructure? That's really what this sounds like. Welcome to web hosting in 1999 guys. Most of the point of AWS was that you have your own dedicated resources. Sure, this is a scaling solution, but revolutionary?

> Welcome to web hosting in 1999 guys.

Sorry, where were you getting servers in 1999 that existed for fractions of a second?

Re: AWS Lambda

#140

Post by ashr »

yzzxy wrote: post #122
codezero wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you're seriously saying that people who are studying computer science lack the ability to tell the difference. Naming the product something that closely resembles its functionality seems like a great idea for a product. It's still Amazon Lambda, and I think it's very unlikely that people will simply refer to it as "Lambda." If CS students find themselves hopelessly confused by this product name, they ar…

I'm not arguing they will not be able to tell the difference... I'm arguing it will cause confusion at some point, and maybe that's a negative externality of naming this product "Lambda." Nobody said "lose a generation of CS students." And, as I've noticed in the past, searching for "y combinator" + any language name will often keep useful results away until you finally block this site. I'm not sure if this is still…

I hear there is a river named Amazon in Southern Hemisphere and there are people landing in Seattle for river expeditions.
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